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Earth's Temperature at Highest Levels in 400 Years
thatguywhoiam writes "Congress asked, and the scientists have answered: 'The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The
National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the 'recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.'"
I'll bet it's warmer than it was 10,000 years ago, too.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
1. It wasn't this hot 400 years ago... we only have 400 years of reliable temperature data.
2. From the fucking article...
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Dear "The Voice of Fairness and Reason,"
Download this: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html
Flip to page 103 for Figure 10-6: Model-based estimates of global sufrface temperature compared to observational estimates with contributions of natural (volcanic and solar) and anthropogenic forcings for 25-year periods shown as color bars.
The anthropogenic bar in the last 25 years totally dominates all of the other bars. I haven't read the entire article, but it sounds to me like you haven't even bothered to read any of it and yet you feel totally comfortable spouting off about it.
Scientists will never clame to PROVE anything, so stop using political motivations to attack scientific findings.
Signed,
The Voice of Telling You To RTFA
Education is the silver bullet.
The chart at this site's page http://carto.eu.org/article2481.html , which is becoming a bit more frequently seen, shows the graph of C02 content in the atmosphere and temperature ranges over the last 400,000 years as derived from examining core samples, up to 1950. In that graph there is a strong corellation between C02 content and temperature change (increased C02 == increased temperature, etc.) The high point on the graph happened about 325,000 years ago when C02 content hit about 300 ppm.
In 1950 C02 content was around 285 ppm.
In 2006 C02 content was 383 ppm
That's nearly 100ppm greater than 56 years ago, nearly 83 ppm greater than the greatest peak currently recorded. We've had a 35% increase in CO2 content over the last 56 years. We're 28% above the previously recorded peak level from the last 400,000 years, and we're seeing record high temperatures for increasingly large spans of time into the past.
Given the nearly lock step relationship between C02 content and temperature change, the rate of increase and the extent of the increase over the last 56 years, and the absence of any other major contributor to CO2 content in the last 56 years, I find it really difficult to think that the human activities known to increase C02 emissions we've increasingly engaged in over the last 150 years have had little to nothing to do with the obvious increase in both C02 atmospheric content and resulting temperature/climate changes. The rate and amount of change seem to indicate that we're already beyond the normal range of variation, yet people still feel comfortable saying it's just the normal fluctuation of the planet's climate. I'd sincerely like to hear other viable explanations for the facts, but there haven't been any - the most well supported hypothisis remains that humans burning fossil fuels (in ever increasing numbers do to an also alarming rate of population growth) are truly affecting the climate.
What I'm also really curious about is why so many are so adamant about refusing to acknowledge what seems to be obvious, but that's a task for psychologists and philosophers I suppose.